As with most industries, of great importance to contact centers is that they are performing efficiently. In general terms, efficiency is considered a measure of the extent to which input is well used for an intended task or function (output). Contact centers make use of several inputs to service communications with various parties that include different technologies, systems, and communication channels, as well as personnel who handle communications such as agents, supervisors, and managers. Accordingly, many contact centers monitor several different metrics that provide a measure of how efficient the centers are operating and making use of these inputs. One of these metrics that is commonly monitored is average handle time.
Average handle time (AHT) measures the average duration of time spent by an agent on a communication with a party. For example, the AHT can measure the average duration of time spent by an agent on a phone call speaking with a party, placing the party on hold, if needed, and wrapping up the call once the agent has finished speaking with the party. While in another instance, the AHT can measure the average duration of time spent by an agent exchanging messages with a party on a chat session or via texts and wrapping up the chat session or texts once the agent has finished exchanging messages with the party.
The leading thought behind AHT is the lower an AHT a contact center can maintain, the more efficient the contact center is operating and the better the contact center is making use of its agent resources. However, a tradeoff can occur when the AHT drops to such a low level that not enough time is spent by agents on communications to adequately address the reasons for conducting the communications. For example, parties may be calling into a contact center for customer service and agents may be rushing to complete the calls with parties to maintain a low AHT. However, because the agents are rushing the calls, they may be failing to address the parties' issues for calling customer service. As a result, many of these parties may need to call into the contact center multiple times to resolve their issues and may become frustrated and disgruntled customers. Therefore, although the contact center appears to be running efficiently because of the low AHT, in actuality the contact center is not making good use of its agent resources because the agents are not adequately helping the parties who have called into customer service. Thus, many contact centers must be careful in how they incorporate and manage AHT in evaluating the efficiency of the centers.
One approach used by many contact centers in managing AHT is to monitor an agent's AHT for various communication channels with respect to a target handle time (THT). This THT is an ideal amount of time an agent should spend on a communication and helps a contact center to identify agents are consistently spending more time than should be needed to handle communications. For example, a particular contact center may monitor whether the AHT for calls taken by its agents is greater than to a THT of five minutes. Typically a contact center establishes the THT for a particular channel of communication based on passed history of communications handled for the channel. The contact center then uses the THT to evaluate the AHT for an agent resulting from all of the communications using that channel handled by the agent.
However, for any one communication, an agent may require more or less time than usual to handle the communication depending on the circumstances of the communication. For example, a customer service call involving a customer calling to check on the status of an order may typically require two minutes to handle while a customer service call involving a customer calling to return an item for refund may typically require ten minutes to handle. Thus, simply using a single THT for customer service calls can lead a contact center to improperly evaluate the efficiency of its agents and to misleading information if the agents are handling a high number of calls that typically require more time to handle than the THT. Furthermore, simply using a single THT can also limit the information that can be gleaned from monitoring handle times for agents. It is with respect to these considerations and others that the disclosure herein is presented.